Frozen in Time
Mar 04, 2008
Compilation of the Arguments That Irrefutably Prove that Climate Change is Driven by Solar Activity

Dr. Gerhard Lobert, Physicist. Recipient of The Needle of Honor of German Aeronautics

As the glaciological and tree ring evidence shows, climate change is a natural phenomenon that has occurred many times in the past, both with the magnitude as well as with the time rate of temperature change that have occurred in the recent decades. The following facts prove that the recent global warming is not man-made but is a natural phenomenon.

1. In the temperature trace of the past 10 000 years based on glaciological evidence, the recent decades have not displayed any anomalous behavior. In two-thirds of these 10,000 years, the mean temperature was even higher than today. Shortly before the last ice age the temperature in Greenland even increased by 15 degrees C in only 20 years. All of this without any man-made CO2 emission!

2. There is no direct connection between CO2 emission and climate warming. This is shown by the fact that these two physical quantities have displayed an entirely different temporal behavior in the past 150 years. Whereas the mean global temperature varied in a quasi-periodic manner, with a mean period of 70 years, the CO2 concentration has been increasing exponentially since the 1950’s. The sea level has been rising and the glaciers have been shortening practically linearly from 1850 onwards. Neither time trace showed any reaction to the sudden increase of hydrocarbon burning from the 1950’s onwards. 

3. The hypothesis that the global warming of the past decades is man-made is based on the results of calculations with climate models in which the main influence on climate is not included. The most important climate driver (besides solar luminosity) comes from the interplay of solar activity, interplanetary magnetic field strength, cosmic radiation intensity, and cloud cover of the Earth atmosphere.  Read more here.

Feb 29, 2008
Australian Ski Resorts See Summer SNOW - ‘We have barely had a summer this year’

By NEWS.com.au

Done and dusted ... summer ends with snow at NSW ski resort Perisher Blue. Forecasters predict a bumper ski season for 2008. The final day of summer in the Snowy Mountains has taken on a wintry chill after snow fell last night at the ski resorts of Perisher Blue and Thredbo. A light dusting of snow blanketed the NSW ski resorts overnight as temperatures dropped to a low of minus 3.8 degrees Celcius at Perisher and minus 3 degrees at Thredbo. Intermittent light snow flurries continued to fall into the morning on Mount Perisher.

Weather forecasters are already predicting a bumper snow season for 2008, according to resort management. Temperatures are expected to remain low with persistent precipitation throughout winter. “We have barely had a summer this year,” said Gary Grant, Perisher Blue’s general manager of marketing. “It’s felt as though it’s remained cold since the end of the 2007 season, apart from a few warm days, there air has always had a nip in it.”

Icecap Note: Last Year, Australian ski areas had the best ski season in 17 years. See this story.


Feb 28, 2008
Snow Records Falling in New England

By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

Earlier we reported places like Madison, Wisconsin in the midwest set new all-time snowfall records and appeared to be heading for 100 inch seasons. Though not as cold as the Midwest this winter, the northern half of New England has been just as snowy, typical in both cases and places of La Nina.

Burlington Vermont has now (as of February 28) exceeded 100 inches for the season (107.1 inches). For the three month winter season, Burlington set a record with 103.4 since December 1. Records extend way back to 1884. The previous record was set in the incredibly snowy strong La Nina winter of 1970/71 which had 96.9 inches during the December through February period. That year they went on to add 45.7 inches more in March and April. No reason to expect the snow to stop coming this year.

A Snowy Vermont press release yesterday noted the abundant snowfall that has blanketed Vermont’s ski areas all season has continued at a record-breaking pace with snowfall totals that have already shattered the 50-year-old mark for the snowiest February in Vermont’s history. And, the copious snow storms this season have already brought this winter’s accumulation into the top 10 all-time snowiest ski and ride seasons on record. “The theme for this season’s ski and ride season has definitely been an abundance of snow with the best possible timing,” said Parker Riehle, president of Ski Vermont. “Just about every weekend and holiday vacation period this season has greeted skiers and riders with enormous amounts of freshly fallen snow, adding to the already considerable snow pack.”

Central New England too has been snowy. Concord, New Hampshire also has now exceeded 100 inches for the season with another light snow event last night. Thery are now at 102.2 inches for the season. They are closing in on the all-time record of 122 set in 1874. In this New Hampshire Public Radio story, they report the heavy snow is causing problems for many New Hampshire towns and cities.

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Photo courtesy of Ric Werme in Penacook, straddling the northern edge of Concord

While northern areas have been covered with white all winter, southern areas of New England which had a 100 inch El Nino season a few years ago have had mostly rain this La Nina year. Both provide more evidence other factors like the oceans (and ultimately the sun) control our climate not man.

Update: USATODAY did a story on the record snows this morning. Note ALSO we have just heard from Steamboat Springs ski area in Colorado that they for the first time ever have had over 100 inches in each of the three winter months of December, January and February.

Feb 28, 2008
Snow Disaster Leaves 1.6 mln People Frostbitten in NW China Province

www.chinaview.cn

Severe snow disasters have left 1.65 million people snowblind and frostbitten, 500,000 livestock and wildlife dead and 3.1 million others on verge of starvation in Tibetan prefectures of northwestern Qinghai Province. Since October last year, consecutive low temperature had gripped the province. The temperature plunged to minus 36.3 degrees centigrade, the record lowest in January in the province, said the provincial meteorological bureau.

In Yushu, Guoluo and Huangnan Tibet Autonomous Prefectures, most of the grassland was covered by snow, 16 to 32 cm thick, which had brought great losses to local animal husbandry. In the disaster-stricken prefectures, 130,000 people had run out of fuels, 350,000 people in need of food and 110,000 others short of warm clothes or quilts, said the provincial government. Currently, the province’s task was to evacuate 11,000 people of 2,000 herdsmen households for the local conditions were not fit to live any longer. Winter storms have also plagued southern China since mid-January, leading to widespread traffic jams, structural collapses, blackouts and crop losses in 19 provinces, leaving 129 people dead and causing 151.65 billion yuan of losses, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Feb 26, 2008
Measuring the Phoenix Urban Heat Island

Climate Skeptic

This is a project my son did for Science Fair to measure the urban heat island effect in Phoenix.  The project could also be called “Disproving the IPCC is so easy, a child could do it.” The IPCC claims that the urban heat island effect has a negligible impact, even on surface temperature stations located within urban areas.  After seeing our data, this claim will be very hard to believe.

We drove transects two nights in a row.  Both nights were cloudless with winds below 5 mph.  Ideally, we would have driven between midnight and 6 AM, but this was my kid’s science project and he needs to get to bed so we did it from about 9PM to 11PM.  We were concerned that the air might still be cooling during the test, such that as we drove out from town, it might be easy to mix up cooling with time and cooling with location.  Our idea for correcting this was to drive and gather data on an entire loop, starting in the center of town, going about 30 miles out, and then returning to the starting point.  That way, with data taken in both directions, the results could be averaged and the cooling rate would cancel out.  As it turned out, we didn’t even bother to do the averaging.  The two trips can be seen in the plots, but the urban heat island shows through pretty clearly in the data and the slope of the line between temperature and distance was about the same on the inbound and outbound legs.

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See larger graph here.

I have not inspected their procedure, but looking at the results there seems to be a built-in assumption in the GISS algorithms that they expect an equal chance of a site being biased upwards vs. downwards.  In fact, I seem to see more GISS corrections fixing imagined downwards biases than upwards biases.  I just don’t see how this is a valid assumption.  The reality is that biases in outdoor temperature measurement are much more likely to be upwards than downwards, particularly over the last 50 years of urbanization and even more particularly given the fact that the preferred measuremnt technology, the MMTS station, has a very very short cable length that nearly gaurantees an installation near buildings, pavement, etc.

To this last point, consider this situation:  Thermometer one in the city shows 2 degrees of warming.  Thermometer two a few hundred kilometers away shows no warming.  Someone aware of urban biases without a dog in the hunt would, without other data to guide them, likely put their money on the rural site being correct and the urban site exaggerated or biased.  The urban site should be thrown out, not averaged in.  However, the folks putting the GISS numbers together are strong global warming believers.  They EXPECT to find warming, so when looking at the same situation, absolutely sure in their hearts there should be warming, the site with the 2 degrees of warming looks correct to them and the no warming site looks anomalous.  It is for this reason that the GISS methodology should be as public as possible, subject to full criticism by everyone. Read more here.

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